Emotion Without Negotiation

Seriouslyourself

Hi there, come on in. This is Seriously Yourself, the podcast and I'm Ingrid Helander.
Hello, hello, how are you? Come on in. It is really a gorgeous day here in New England and um I hope wherever you are listening from, it is also a good day where you are. Today, I'm talking about an interesting thing that happens inside of us and it's interesting, especially to me because with the help of my own therapist, I was able to discover something I was doing with the best of intentions that was making my life really way more difficult. And so I thought, hey, if I'm doing this, probably others are doing this too. And so I thought I would share it with you. So here's the question, do you have parts of you that are very concerned about being very fair, sort of maybe judicial, what's the word? You know, appropriate that are careful and considerate of others feelings and thoughts? Yeah, I bet you do. I bet you do. And I found this part of me that had gotten a little twisted up in that very state. That trying to be fair, which by the way, I do think is important, right? It's the responsible thing to do to take responsibility for our own actions, our feelings and our behaviors. But what was happening for me, which I was able to find thanks to a fabulous therapist that I work with and I'm gonna insert a little parenthetical here, (if you work with a therapist and they say they never work with a therapist, you totally have my permission to turn and walk out the door because you kind of have to do the work to do the work) that was in the side and parentheses? Right?
So back to the topic here was this neat little way that I was sort of sabotaging my own parts and my own feelings with the very, very best of intention. I would say things like this. Well, a part of me feels this way And within about 20 seconds I would also say something like this. And that's not really fair though, because this person doesn't know they're doing that or it isn't their intention to hurt me. And so I should therefore feel differently. And the brilliant therapist that I see, was able to catch that and she went, whoa, your therapist ever make you slow down and stop and wait, wait, wait, take a look.
So we started taking a look and it was something like this, I would have a feeling. Maybe it would connect to a thought. For example, something like my husband said this and when he said this, it kind of hurt my feelings and made me feel unseen. And then within seconds, but that's not really fair because I know that wasn't his intention and in fairness, he couldn't have known my feelings. And in fairness, you know, this is something maybe I need to deal with and on and on. So I would take every bit of responsibility for the feeling and put it up into my brain and set it up to be evaluated. Do you hear that? So rather than it just be a feeling or a passing thought attached to a feeling, we would be more like here is an article for your consideration, judge and take a minute and really notice. Is that fair and accurate and complete or is it not? And then another feeling would have to come in pretty quickly to balance that like, well, okay, that makes perfect sense and therefore I should really attend to myself so that I don't keep doing this unfair thing to someone else and the feeling would come up and it would end up in my system like I can't trust, right? I can't trust myself or anyone else to care about what I feel at that time, Right? Because there was no validation for even a moment about what I felt. It was a naming of it, which is a great first step and then I would jump right to well what's the judgment about it? Right. Do I have a right to be angry? Do I have a right to be hurt? Do I have a right to feel untrusting? Do have a right to feel portrayed? Do I have a right to feel invalidated? Do have a right to feel frustrated? Do I have a right to feel annoyed all day long? Do you see how that could happen?
And as a therapist, you know very often? Well always I would say it's really important to be able to rest back and receive everything that your client is expressing in a way that is open and nonjudgmental and just allowing and clear. And I think that is always true, but it didn't really apply internally. In other words. I don't have to be so quick. Well, I guess it does apply internally. Like I wasn't doing it for myself right? Like I was so quick to go, yeah, let's let's just consider the other person, but not me. Let's consider the other person in a personal example, but not myself really, right. I could consider it by naming what I'm feeling. I'm naming that I'm annoyed, but that's not really right or fair because the person, you know didn't mean to annoy me, didn't know.
So after realizing this, I'm recognizing, wow, I do this quite often. And what I believe it causes inside us when we do this is sort of this constant polarization, right? I feel this way, but I shouldn't feel this way right? Or I feel this way, but my thoughts say that's just wrong. Therefore do not. If you have this experience, I want you to listen in really tightly because this could definitely contribute to rumination that feeling of like I can't turn my brain off at night, right? Or in the morning or whenever it happens to you. That running mind because you're always sort of placing your feelings into the vat of judgment and evaluation and determination whether you should have that feeling and I'm here to tell you you already have the feeling. You already have the feeling so you don't have to stop and go. Should I have this feeling? That's a done deal. That's a done deal. You don't need to evaluate whether it deserves to be. It is, it just was already, are you getting it? It's subtle. It's weird. It's a little head trick.
So what can you do instead? Well, the first thing is when you do name a sensation a feeling you have it is fine to not activate any parts in your mind that wish to decide whether you should or shouldn't have that feeling. It's a feeling, feelings happen they're happenings. Okay, take a moment and this is what I'm actually retraining myself to do and notice some part of me feels let's say frustrated and maybe this part has a story right, about what it's frustrated about. So maybe the story is my husband used my special facial soap in the shower as you can tell. This probably actually happened because who would come up with that? Right? So he actually used my special, more expensive facial soap as a body soap in the shower, though I had it separated from the body soap. So what I might feel is annoyed or irritated. Right, Okay, so my habit would be to name it, oh man, that's annoying and irritating and then instantly go into, but it's not really fair because I don't really remember if I mentioned to him what that was and I really can't expect that he would just know not to use it even though there is a bar of body soap in the usual place etcetera. Okay, lots of explanation, lots of justification for his feelings. And he, we haven't even talked yet, right? We haven't even talked about it. So now rather than doing that, what I'm discovering again is that it's important to name, whoa, I see my husband's in using my face soap and that feels annoying to me and then rather than jumping to the brain and pushing it away or reasoning it out of being. Acknowledging this feeling exists, currently I'm annoyed.
Okay, so let's take a breath, taking notice. What's that feel like in my body. What does annoyance feel like? Well, feels kind of tight in my jaw. Maybe my teeth clench a little bit. Maybe my heart sinks and I hear myself say, yeah, "he doesn't care about my stuff or I don't feel like respected". Now this no longer is likely about my husband, but that doesn't mean it's not important for me to attend to and I want you to hear that. This is probably no longer entirely about the other person, but it is a feeling that you need to attend too with compassion. So maybe I hear that part say, you know, I'm not feeling cared for or seen or validated and then maybe I have a sense in my body of roots, right? Little parts from history that say, oh yeah, I was the youngest child, so maybe I didn't always feel respected. Frankly at that age, I probably, you know, didn't command a whole lot of it, that's okay, but I still felt it right. Or maybe I do find a current day something like it is important for me to verbalize, to speak to my husband about things that feel owie when they get run over a little bit without blaming or shaming or ignoring.
You see, when we send those feelings directly to thought and try to balance them out, It amounts to sort of ignoring the issue on the outside because at least in my case I always lose, right, I always am the one that after I've negotiated with my own brain about this feels like I don't have the right to speak up about it. And so, you know, that definitely contributes to poor communication in my home, right? Because I'm always having the conversations with myself in my head and then sort of stuffing down the feelings. This is sounds like something you might do too? I'm gonna guess it might be.
So maybe this week you just notice how often do you name what you're feeling, which is a really good thing to do, do it, but then move on as if, yeah, but I feel different ways and maybe it's not fair, or maybe I should just let it go. Maybe you should, but we can't let something go that we didn't hold to begin with. You felt it, you can feel it and it's important to feel it and to spend a little time with it, without explaining it away. So that's my little little word of this week. I hope it's helpful for you to if it is, please drop me a message and let me know, let me know what you like about the podcast and definitely subscribe and leave a review about what you loved wherever you get your podcast, that really does help. And if you love even more, I would love love to welcome you to seriously yourself, the community. We do have some time this month where we're going to be bringing in new people and you can find that on my website at https://ingridyhelanderlmft.com/seriouslyourself-the-membership/ . Look for the tab at the top that says seriously yourself subscription and come and join us. Thanks for being here. As always, I really enjoy your company. Take good care, bye.
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And thanks to those who make Seriouslyourself special: our wonderful music is Midsummer from the album Flood by the fabulous Joel Helander. Seriouslyourself is produced by Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, Executive Producer. The ideas and inspirations come from beautiful humans like you, that I feel lucky to know. And I'm Ingrid Helander. Take good care of yourself. See you next time.